


Midnight Cypress

by BananaOctopus



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, BAMF Nohara Rin, Character Death, F/M, Family, Good Uchiha Obito, Hatake Kakashi is Bad at Feelings, Hatake Kakashi is a Little Shit, Minor Romance, Nohara Rin Lives, Nohara Rin is Bad at Feelings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Female Character, Protective Nohara Rin, Rin Nohara is in root, Team Minato-centric, Uchiha Obito Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28519011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BananaOctopus/pseuds/BananaOctopus
Summary: She smiles, but it has no meaning. Obito would beg to differ.Or,Rin Nohara is cold and apathetic, but she wants to be better.Or,Rin Nohara is a root agent.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Namikaze Minato, Hatake Kakashi & Nohara Rin, Hatake Kakashi & Nohara Rin & Uchiha Obito, Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Obito, Namikaze Minato/Uzumaki Kushina, Nohara Rin/Uchiha Obito, Shimura Danzo & Nohara Rin
Kudos: 15





	Midnight Cypress

She holds the book tightly, tightly in her small, small hands. The plastic cover crinkles loudly in her hold and the feeling is nostalgic: far away, beside her, heartbreakingly familiar.

Everything, everyone is quiet. She sits in the back, on a chair that creaks like her father's bones after a hard day's work on the farm, dirty fingers and wide smiles; something that she does not have.

The book is large, not in the amount of pages or words it holds but rather the size of the pages themselves. She distantly wonders if she could use the book as an umbrella while the rain _pit pats_ outside, tapping on the windows and reminding her that noise exists outside of her domain.

She traces her fingers on detailed illustrations of demons and other yoki, entities that steal and devour the souls of babes and hearts of maidens. Sharp teeth and balmy eyes on skin that is either slimy of furry.

She reads about children with monsters in their closets and outside of their windows, fearful of abstract shadows that linger in the dark. Saved by heroes, or becoming their own hero. She wonders if that's what most children think monsters are, beings that lurk in the night, hiding in the corners of their eyes, never to be seen fully.

She knows that these aren't real monsters, and that the real ones aren't bothered to hide, willing beasts that destroy anything in their paths and hide in the skin of man. Do hidden monsters bleed? Perhaps they are not truly frightening if they themselves are too cowardly to face their victims head on.

Rin's monsters bleed, and they are very real.

When she was little—or rather, smaller than she is now, she remembers fearing the same mystical beings and running into the safety of her parent's room, burying herself in the safe confines of her mothers loving arms, comforted by the tired whispers of her father, promising her that he would scare the monsters away, that they would never harm her.

He did not, and when she went to go hide from the world in her mothers arms, she found that her soft skin was charred like meat, comforting arms ripped from their sockets. White bone marrow protruding through her flesh invasively.

She cried and cried, and the monsters with faces like her mother's bones carved out into masks and painted on grabbed her without a word, rythme or reason and dragged her from her home kicking and screaming. She cried and cried as she saw her village burn to the ground, the howls and shrieks of those she knew snuffed out like a light in the darkness.

It was as quiet as her domain now when she left. Her tears dried up like the desert, and when she was thrown to the monsters that called themselves Root she used her tears as sweat and blood instead. She would become a monster too.

She sits reading for hours on end, enraptured by these child-friendly horror stories and taking in their writings. She only gets up to get more books, and only moves her hands to turn pages.

She doesn't want to go back. She doesn't want to go back 'home'.

But all things must come to an end, and when the librarian taps her gently on the shoulders, ushering her out of the building with a faux smile and an umbrella in her hand; she does not pout or whine. She simply grabs the umbrella with a small thanks and walks out into the rain with a blank face and trepidation in her heart as she walks back to her small apartment where her caretaker will be waiting for her.

Her code name is Hiro, but Rin must call her mother, or else she will be considered defective. She calls this stranger mother with a smile and feels apart of her flake away to the wind every time she does.

She remembers a woman who liked to sing in the morning with smooth hands and chipped nails, who baked breads from the wheat her father would harvest, who told her she loved her every night without fail.

She now looks at a woman with short, badly managed hair. Who has rough hands and uses rough words, who stares at Rin with no feeling, no song in her heart, who would say nothing and be nothing as Rin cried silently in her pillow with a blank face with dry cheeks.

She feels nothing for this woman, she's beginning to feel nothing for anyone and anything. How long will it take for Rin to chip away entirely, she wonders.

* * *

She goes to the academy and sees him: the boy, the Uchiha, _the mission_.

He's cheery and bright, he grins more then smiles, and he's kind. He immediately befriends her when he finds her sitting alone at lunch, no food given to her by her caretaker.

"Would you like some?" He asked with wide, vulnerable eyes and a piece of sausage stabbed with a chopstick in his hand—an offering, she realizes.

She smiles blandly, even though she wants to smile wide, "Thank you," she replies softly, taking the chopstick from his hand.

She does not know how to feel for the mission.

She wants to feel sad, or perhaps glad that she now has a friend, but she can only feel nothing, like apathy coating her heart in a film, blocking out emotions that want to seep in and take root.

_"Feel something!"_ She wants to yell at herself when Obito cries into her chest, arms wrapped around her in a vise as he asks her _"Why am I not good enough?"_

She wants these emotions so badly, yet the foundation trained her too well.

...

_(or perhaps not well enough, for her to be wishing for these emotions in the first place)_

* * *

Kakashi Hatake could almost be considered an antithesis of the boy.

He is talented where Uchiha is not. He can do backflips and cartwheels and jutsu and spar chunin teachers without a problem. He can kill baby bunnies and choose to abandon comrades if they become liabilities.

He's a perfect ninja.

If Rin could feel like she wants to, she knows that she would hate Kakashi as violently as she wants to now. But Rin cannot feel hate, so instead she settles for the cold apathy she always has, letting it embrace her and wash over her in waves every time he opens his mouth or turns his head in her direction.

She knows that his life is not easy, that he will live a hard life and that his father took his own life—but her father is just as dead as his, and her life is hard now, so she feels like she is justified in her feelings.

Kakashi Hatake may be a perfect ninja, but he is not a perfect person.

He speaks down on others, and crushed their dreams without thought or care. He calls Uchiha a failure, and crushes him cruelly in spars to rub it in his face.

_"See? Look how easily I beat you, you're never going to be Hokage. You have no talent at all, you don't put in work."_

But Rin knows this is false. Rin knows that Uchiha works harder than the rest and trains and trains until his knuckles bleed and his chakra coils are exhausted. Rin knows that Obito will cry in frustration when he doesn't get techniques right and will push and push until there is nothing left.

She tells herself that it only bothers her so much because _he is the mission, he must be in perfect condition_ , but something in her chest squeezes whenever she thinks it.

* * *

On the days leading up to graduation Hiro comes to her and tells her that _Leader_ wants to see her.

_Leader_ is the only thing _(and it is a thing, not a person, no person could pretend to be a monster so well—)_ that scares her. She does not fear death when her most vivid memory is being surrounded so intimately with it. She does not fear isolation for she has been isolated her whole life.

No, monsters are who she fears, and _Leader_ controls hundreds of them.

She goes into a dark room, isolated from everything, everyone and bows to the man who took everything from her.

" _Leader_."

He sits on his chair across a large table filled with a papers and folders, she glances at them and wonders if her village was once one of those papers on his desk, the fate of them tossed so carelessly on varnished wood.

"How long have you been in contact with your mission?"

"Six years, _Leader_."

"How close are you?"

"He considers me to be his closest friend, _Leader_."

"Do you consider your mission to this point to be successful?"

"Yes, _Leader_."

He looks at her blankly, but she can see flickers of greed in her eyes. Her emotions outside her apathy only speak of heartache and a deep foreboding dread.

"Your next task is to make the Uchiha activate his Mangekyou Sharingan, I will get someone to collect his eyes. Dismissed."

Ah yes, deep foreboding dread indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, crossposted from my wattpad. 
> 
> The idea of Rin being in root isn’t something that came from me. My friend from wattpad (who sadly deleted her account aww) came up with the idea and let me write it. 
> 
> Sorry for the short chapter, I’ll try to double the length next time. 
> 
> Btw, this fic is going to be short and sweet, me thinks around 15,000 or so.


End file.
